11mo ago

"Starfield's lead quest designer had 'absolutely no time' and had to hit the 'panic button' so the game would have a satisfying final quest"

www.pcgamer.com Starfield's lead quest designer had 'absolutely no time' and had to hit the 'panic button' so the game would have a satisfying final quest

"It became very clear that we were missing the large final location that was going to tie the story together," says former lead quest designer Will Shen.

Starfield's lead quest designer had 'absolutely no time' and had to hit the 'panic button' so the game would have a satisfying final quest

""We were finally at a state in the project where we could play through the whole [game]. And it became very clear that we were missing the large final location that was going to tie the story together and have a satisfying action-filled payoff," Shen said. "I was both implementing the main quest and leading the quest design team, so I had absolutely no time. The entire quest design team was already overbooked.""

The quest design team being overbooked and not having time certainly explains a lot.

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11mo ago

Starfield's lead quest designer had 'absolutely no time' and had to hit the 'panic button' so the game would have a satisfying final quest

www.pcgamer.com /games/rpg/starfields-lead-quest-designer-had-absolutely-no-time-and-had-to-hit-the-panic-button-so-the-game-would-have-a-satisfying-final-quest/

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11mo ago

Starfield's lead quest designer had 'absolutely no time' and had to hit the 'panic button' so the game would have a satisfying final quest

www.pcgamer.com /games/rpg/starfields-lead-quest-designer-had-absolutely-no-time-and-had-to-hit-the-panic-button-so-the-game-would-have-a-satisfying-final-quest/

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25 comments

Starfield was in development for 7 years, which seems like a fair bit of time to figure out main storylines etc. Baldur's Gate 3 is said to have taken 6 years to make. Did Bethesda only hire the quest design team in the last year or something?
- That's, oddly, a common feature of modern production. Narrative still plays second fiddle to mechanics.
  Which, in this case is doubly weird since the mechanics have existed since the age of Skyrim.
  
  That argument makes sense for games with enjoyable mechanics. You can’t make an incredibly dull game and then use that excuse.

That was the satisfying ending? The ending was stupid. I had to ask to make sure that really was the ending. And now, I just get to keep going? What a ripoff.
- I think the "just keep going" was a Tod Howard demand, his ideal game is a LLM that generates endless radiant quests. Generated content has been a hallmark of everything he's touched, and it's always a low-point in that game because he expects it to stand by itself, instead of using it as a tool for the designers to build off of.
  
  Tod doesnt want a game.
  He just wants an AI sandbox that he can churn out endlessly, make shittons of money with, with little expense or effort
- My biggest issue with starfield is that it ended there. Like literally right when it got good imo. Imagine if they continued on and you did the whole time traveling thing with a dedicated story instead of just a new game+ thing. Not super original, but definitely would’ve been better than what we got.
  
  I would have been fine with a new game+ story but the main story got completely revamped for the second playthrough. Not just a few unique dialogue options.
- i think the whole space not-magic bullshit angle was an insulting disappointment. Like they wanted to make skyrim in space and were desperate for a shout equivalent.
  Doubly so especially when you count it towards that bullshit ending thats nothing but a new game+
- Am I the only one that liked the ending? Maybe I just set the bar low after the endings in Fallout 3, 4, and Skyrim, but I thought it was well above any of those three. I felt like the game book-ended well: solid start and finish.
  Almost everything else in between? Yeah, they obviously didn't flesh out the story much.

Jesus people give this Bethesda company a break, they're a brand new indie company. They have like 3 employees and this is their first game, it's not like they have decades of experience to judge how much time designing a story could take or what issues might pop up. That's shit you'd expect from a AAA company.

You’d think that the main quest line was one of the very first things that they’d design. Like, before they even started coding. Not something they’d rush at the very end of development.

I don't want a long time. I want a good time.
That's why radiant quests are rubbish and crafted storylines are the thing.

I thought the ending was interesting until I played through it. It just reinforced how pointless the whole story was. Maybe it had good intentions, I can see that on paper, but it made me question why I wasted my time if none of my decisions mattered anyways. We play games to be entertained and escape reality, not to reinforce what we already know. Most of what we do doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

I would love to see like 3 or 4 main quests, like a choose your own adventure. Sounds like I am being very overoptimistic though.
- Stop demanding replay ability and meaningful choice. You are ruining modern gaming!
  Enjoy your radiant quests and feel satisfied fetching stuff and killing stuff endlessly.
  ... Seriously, there was a thing that bothered me about playing Space Invaders in the arcades and it was the fact that no matter how good you got the ending was always either your inevitable death or the fact that you just stopped playing.
  This game felt so familiar.
  
  My comment was bad and I feel bad. I know what I did.
- Bethesda probably got a big shock with Starfield (although I'm assured it still made a lot of money). My hopeful guess is that more carefully crafted expansions/updates + community mods will make the game great in a few years with features that improve replayability like branching quests. I'm putting off buying until then though.

if you gave me 30 seconds to design a final quest for a video game, I could come up with something better than "you float around the room and you have to touch the right star a dozen times but you move really slowly and we don't bother explaining it to you the first time".
- man, I spent so long trying to figure out that first power chamber whatever thing thats never explained. I was expecting some brilliant reveal about the origins of the galaxy and life in it or something.
  but nope.
  useless not-magic.

Note: the final paragraph contains spoilers for Starfield's ending

so it would have a satisfying final quest
Satisfying to whom? 🤨
The most interesting thing in Starfield is tied to RNG that affects NG+. You might not even get one of those alternative universes though. You may need to play through 2 or 3 times before it happens. And it's not worth it because at the end of the day, it's a whole lotta boring exposition and overused tropes just to see an amusing gag maybe.

25 comments